53: My Business Journey: 18 Years Later

Mak and I discuss the years in my business. It has been 18 years. How the business evolved and what is still very true for us. We talked about our highlights and lowlights and share with you a delicious tomato pesto recipe for pasta. 

For the show notes go to www.veets.com.au/53

Links mentioned in the show 

https://www.veets.com.au/living-well-with-veet   New membership program 

 https://mailchi.mp/veets/sniggers-bar-optin   at time of Recording a fabulous free cooking class 

https://www.veets.com.au/vegan-nutrition-course\

Hope you have a wonderful week and look forward to recording another podcast for you next week.

Please email me info@veets.com.au 

If you want to have a chat about anything.

With gratitude Veet 

To sign up for the free  sniggers bar class on the 28th of May at 10 am NSW time 

click here 

https://mailchi.mp/veets/sniggers-bar-optin

To sign up for the free  sniggers bar class on the 28th of May at 10 am NSW time 

click here 

https://mailchi.mp/veets/sniggers-bar-optin

Transcript

Veet

This week I’m here to talk about my business. Last week my business turned 18, yay! At the time of recording, my business is now officially an adult: 18 years old.

May is also an amazing month because I started the cooking school in May 11 years ago. I wanted to share with you, wonderful listener, what my business has been about, how it has evolved, and what has happened over these 18 years.

There has been a beautiful somebody by my side that whole time, so I’ve decided to invite him along. Mak will be joining me on the podcast as we talk all things Veet’s Cuisine, Veet’s Vegan Cooking School, and now the business known as Veet Karen Vegan Cooking and Nutrition.

Listen up, and remember all the relevant show notes are over at www.veets.com.au/53.

Veet

Hello, I’m Veet Karen, a nutritionist and vegan cooking course facilitator. I’m recording this podcast in Murwillumbah, Northern NSW, Australia, on the beautiful lands of the Minjungbal people of the Bundjalung Nation.

The intention of the Vegan Cooking and Nutrition Podcast is to share lots and lots of tips and tricks to help you cook well, eat sensational food, and live your most awesome life. So let’s get started!

Oh, welcome Mak. It’s so nice to have you on the podcast.

Mak

Yes, hello! I’m nervous as all get-out. It’s my first-ever interview.

Veet

Oh, you’ll do fine, you’ll do fine.

I thought, while Mak is here, we could talk a little about his role in my business over the years.

Mak

I’ve been the dog’s body, the gofer. I do anything Veet doesn’t want to do. I started off delivering meals after you did the cooking.

Veet

Yeah, so I first started with this great idea. We lived near the beautiful rainforest village of Main Arm. We lived up this two-kilometre dirt road which used to get flooded and washed away, and then we had this really steep dirt driveway.

And I had this amazing idea to start a home-delivered meals business. Crazy, crazy!

Mak was my first investor. Do you remember that?

Mak

I do, yes. Very clearly, because you reminded me.

Veet

Because I had this idea that I wanted to deliver the meals in glass containers, but I didn’t know if the business was going to be successful, so I bought takeaway containers instead. (after this initial investment I started buying glass containers).

I went down to Ballina and was all set to buy 50 because I’d got my first order of 30 meals. I didn’t know how many people were going to order the first time. Then I got there and discovered I had to buy 500! I was so freaked out.

I rang Mak and he said, “I’ll buy them for you.” So yes, he was my first investor.

Then came the first Monday delivery. I got 32 meal orders and I was so excited. Mak has this idea that he did all the deliveries, but he didn’t! I delivered most of them, but he did some up into Upper Main Arm on his motorbike, and it can be a bit hairy up there.

We got home afterward and he said to me, “What’s for dinner?”

Mak

What’s for dinner?

Veet

And I’d forgotten to cook us dinner! So he had to go back out to Mullumbimby — about 15 minutes away  and get us pizza.

From the home-delivery service, I soon started doing retreat catering, which I absolutely loved, and I did that for over 10 years.

Then, 11 years ago, I started the vegan chef training. When I first started my business, I wasn’t formally trained as a chef because to train at TAFE I still had to cut up meat, and there was no way I was going to do that.

About seven years into my business, I thought, surely there must be vegetarian chef training by now? But there wasn’t, not officially, anywhere in the world. You still had to cut meat.

So I thought, “Okay, I have teaching skills.” Before the business, I had been a teacher, including an English teacher and a teacher in a juvenile detention centre. So I decided to use my teaching skills to create a Vegan Chef Training.

Mak

No, no, you carry on, dear.

Veet

Actually, I was teaching in prison before I came to the Northern Rivers, teaching in a juvenile detention centre. Nothing else compared to it, and that’s really why I decided to go into business. I missed teaching there so much.

Anyway, we’re going all over the place but that’s fine!

I started the vegan chef training, and out of that grew the Vegan Foundation Course. Hundreds and hundreds of people have now done these courses.

The first four chef trainings were held out at Coorabell Hall. Then in 2020, everything changed. I went back to catering because I couldn’t imagine how teaching could possibly work online.

So we started a delivery service again, and Mak came out with me, delivering meals all around Byron during those very quiet, COVID time, streets.

Now, as many of you know or maybe don’t if you’re new here I’m a nutritionist, and my main focus is helping people live healthy lives well into their elder years.

So Mak, what do you think have been the highlights of my business?

Mak

Let me consult my notes…

Veet

Okay, while he’s fussing around… 

Mak 

Catering for Deva Premal and Miten for 10 years was definitely a highlight.

Veet

I remember when the organiser, Alison, asked me to cater for 270 people. She asked, “Can you do that?” and I said, “Well, if I can’t do it, no one can!” That sounds cocky, but that’s honestly how I felt.

I did a really good job. We catered for them for three years, and they recently contacted me because they’re returning to Australia for a retreat in October. They asked if I would cater again, but I stopped catering in 2020.

The chef training was another huge highlight. And now my current highlight is the Living Well Program, bringing together cooking and nutrition into one incredible resource.

I want everything I know about vegan cooking and nutrition in one place for people to access.

Mak

The chef training graduations were fantastic. The food was incredible, the music was good, and it was fun being backstage in the kitchen.

Veet

And what about the lowlights of the business?

Mak

Just how much you were away when you were catering. You worked incredibly hard all the time, and I was often on my own.

Veet

Yeah, I didn’t realise until 2020 just how much I was away. Those catering jobs were huge. Sometimes I’d do 16-hour days for a month straight without a day off.

But I thrived on it. I loved showing people how incredible plant-based food could be. I worked with the most amazing people, many of whom are still close friends today.

Mak has had many roles in the business. Every time I came back with a van full of things, he’d help unpack it all. In the final three years I had the wonderful Wayne working for me, so Mak didn’t have to do that any more.

He’s also done proofreading, typeset both my cookbooks, and put together the huge syllabus for the chef training. Right now he’s helping me with the new nutrition course, which has just started this May. The first module alone is 158 pages!

So Mak has been helping with the typesetting and proofreading on that too.

Mak

It was loads of fun because I trained in a newspaper as a typesetter, so I really love doing this kind of work. That’s my favourite.

Veet

One of the jobs Mak had, just naturally, was being my chief number-one taste tester. How was that?

Mak

Well, that was really good actually. I really enjoyed it — mainly because everything tasted so good.

Veet

Yeah.

Mak

And I’m not just saying that, because it really did. I can probably count on less than one hand the meals Veet has made in 25 years that I didn’t particularly like.

Veet

It was so good having Mak as my connoisseur, giving me little bits of constructive feedback along the way. Some people just say, “Oh, that’s great,” but Mak gives honest feedback, and I really value that.

I have a funny story. At the first vegan chef training graduation, there was this incredible raw tiramisu made by Pandora. Her daughter was there too. Mak was eating the tiramisu and said to her daughter, “Wow, this is the best tiramisu I’ve ever tasted and I’m a tiramisu connoisseur.”

Later Pandora’s daughter told her, “Wow, there was a tiramisu connoisseur at the graduation!”

So now Mak is known as the tiramisu connoisseur.

Mak

Just because I’ve eaten a lot of tiramisu in my time.

Veet

In 2015, when I started the vegan chef training, it actually began as a vegetarian chef training. I started advertising it on vegan and vegetarian Facebook groups, and people kept asking, “Why isn’t it vegan?”

And I thought… why isn’t it vegan? And why am I not vegan?

I’d been vegetarian since I was 16, Mak was vegetarian, we’d both given up eggs, and the only thing left was dairy. So in 2015 I transitioned to a vegan diet. Mak found giving up milk difficult at first.

Mak

Because of my cup of tea in the morning.

Veet

But the next year he became vegan too.

How has it been for you transitioning to veganism?

Mak

I became vegan especially after watching a movie called Dairy Is Scary. If you still consume milk and cheese, watch that movie and you might not any more.

How’s being vegan? It’s great. I love it.

And the funny thing is there are foods I used to dislike that I now really enjoy. I love aubergines now I used to hate them.

Veet

That’s eggplant. And also tahini you didn’t used to like tahini. And tempeh!

Mak

I’ve become much less fussy. And my taste buds have become much more alive and subtle. I taste things far better than I used to before I was vegan.

Veet

And speaking of taste buds becoming more subtle, we’re about to do something that is definitely not subtle, we’re going to eat some Sniggers Bar!

If you’re listening at the time of recording, this Thursday I’m running a free cooking class called the Sniggers Bar Cooking Class, to celebrate 18 years of the business.

The Sniggers Bar is incredible, isn’t it Mak? The link is in the shownotes to sign up and if you are listening after the 28th May 2026 you can catch the sniggers bar recipe over at the Living well with Veet Cooking and nutrition collective.

Mak

It is absolutely delicious.

Veet

There’s only a little maple syrup in the chocolate topping — otherwise it’s sweetened with dates.

You can register for the class and join us live on Thursday at 10am NSW time. If you can’t make it live, you’ll have access to the recording for seven days. And if you’re listening in the future, you can access it through the Living Well Cooking Collective.

Mak

It’s Sniggers time!

Veet

We are back. How was the Sniggers?

Mak

It was absolutely delicious.

Veet

I’d already eaten my piece before! Mak thought he was bringing me one, but I couldn’t help myself.

Okay, before the break we were talking about veganism. If you could travel back in time to 2016, would you still make the same decision to become vegan?

Mak

Of course I would. For two main reasons: one, because I care about animals, and two, because I wanted to stay with you and you probably would have left me if I hadn’t.

Veet

Oh come on, Mak, stop it!

You also mentioned before that you don’t get colds any more.

Mak

Yeah, before becoming vegan I used to get three or four colds every year. Now I never get colds.

Veet

I think you only had the flu once when we went to Bali.

Mak

Yeah, that was different. That was a really bad flu.

Veet

So we've come back not so happy, happy, dappy because we recorded nine minutes of the podcast. I accidentally deleted it. 

So we're redoing it. Anyway, we're doing it again, because we love you, wonderful listener. And when I first met Mak, I was very interested, prior to meeting him, which was 25 years ago this year, I was very interested in organic food, and I was buying organic food from the Fremantle market and also from a place called Peaches. Going down to Manna and getting as much as I could organic. But sometimes things were much more expensive, and then I would go off to the supermarket or Dewsons it was called, like IGA, and get it from there instead, Then I met Mak and he told me, on our first date, that he used to be an organic farmer. He was an organic farmer in France, yeah, in the south of France, in the Pyrenees, in a town called La Serre which is...

 Mak

near Rimont. You can find it on Google Maps . 

Veet

So he was an organic farmer and him telling me that, it's like, yeah,  I want to commit to being organic and so all through my business any of the, um...

Mak

I wasn't a vegan then, no. We had cows and horses and chickens.

Veet

Well horses are okay, you're not going to eat the horses are you? 

Mak

No and we didn't ride them either, we just cuddled them. 

Veet

Oh anyway, but anyway, if you ride a horse we love you, we're not, you know, we're not here judgemental, but we just have our own ethics around things and what was I going to say anyway,  all through my business I had organic food and a real commitment to it, and in the home apart, from Mak’s chippies that he gets, pretty much everything is organic, and we rarely go out to eat because it is hard to find organic food when we're out. That does make us super sensitive, so if we do go away on holiday we have to be super careful, because we're not used to eating the chemicals that are in food. And so why is it important for you that we eat organic, Mak?

Mak

Well because I think it's really really silly to put poison into your body when you don't have to, and thankfully, we can afford to eat organic food and so we do. Like, for example, there's e a local person that makes really really delicious Pitta bread, but I can't eat it because every time I try to eat it I feel sick, and I actually am sick. I'm literally, you know, I'm sick.

Veet 

And you know, that is a point, because it's full of glyphosate, yeah absolutely, so you know, at one point, Mak thought he might be gluten intolerant, but he's actually chemical intolerant. 

Mak

Glyphosate intolerant. 

Veet

And for me, you know, about being able to afford it, like this I'm really going to tell you my personal stuff here, this is the first time I've owned a house and had a mortgage, and when the mortgage rates went up, I actually had two months where I didn't have any work and I was on bare bones money, and I still found a way to eat organic. I just ate a little less, so it wasn't as much as a piggy-piggy, and what I also find with organic is, I never let anything go to waste, because it is that bit more expensive. If I go to the markets I'll buy one zucchini instead of three, you know, whereas before, when it's cheaper, you might buy a bit extra and it doesn't matter so much if it's gone off and you throw it away. So in the end the food doesn't actually work out that much more expensive and I did a price comparison. It's more nourishing as well

Mak

So it fills you more.

Veet

So you don't need as much. I remember the wonderful Lisa Grant telling me that, you know, when they ate non-organic peaches they were not as full as when they ate organic peaches. Anyway, so that's it, we're fully committed to having plant-based food and also organic, and I think we're going to stop there, but you know, I'm hoping that my business will go on for a lot lot more, many more years, and you'll be listening to these podcasts weekly for a lot longer. But before that there's something. Oh yeah, you did say that yeah so, but what have we forgot to do is we want to put the recipe, and what recipe, what should I do?

Mak

One of my very favourite pasta recipes is the walnut pesto tomato.

Veet

Oh yes, and this one we do for Tamaya, possibly with a few mushrooms. Tamaya was asking  in the sauerkraut club about that, and yes, so you could fry up mushrooms on the side. 

Tomato Walnut Pesto

Ingredients

·                2 cups cherry tomatoes 

·                2 cloves garlic 

·                1/3 cup walnuts 

·                1/3 cup pepitas 

·                1/4 cup nutritional yeast 

·                1/3 cup fresh basil
 (or oregano or parsley if basil isn’t in season) 

·                Salt, to taste 

·                Cooked pasta, to serve 

·                Optional: mushrooms 

Method

1.             Preheat the oven. 

2.             Place the cherry tomatoes and garlic on a tray and roast for 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes are blistered. 

3.             In a food processor, blend the walnuts, pepitas, nutritional yeast, and basil. 

4.             Add the roasted tomatoes and garlic with a little salt. 

5.             Process until combined into a pesto-like sauce. 

6.             Toss through cooked pasta and serve. 

7.             Optional: Fry mushrooms separately and stir through the pasta. 

Any leftovers can be frozen or stirred through a rice salad. 

Veet 

Ok Mak, the next thing. Is that a chef term? The next thing is our fun cooking tip. What's the fun cooking tip?

FCT (fun cooking tip) 

Mak

This is my personal fun cooking tip, which is, if you like to drink your tea, or coffee, or whatever, hot all the way from start to finish, buy yourself an insulated mug. I have a, like, a double cup of tea in the morning and it's, like, half an hour after I've started, it's still piping hot.

Veet 

Yay that's a great tip. Thank you so much, Mak, for being the guest on our show. Will we have him on again? Let me see what you think listener.

Mak

And if we get a million listens, views, whatever it is, then I'll come back on again.

Veet

So please, on that note, can you please like, share, subscribe, let everyone know about this podcast and we will be back. But I'll be back next week anyway. 

Have a wonderful, delicious week. Lovely listener. I love you.